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From: "Jack C. Lipton" <cupasoup@pele.cx>
Subject: {ASSM} Shuffled (MF swap impreg)
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Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 13:10:01 -0400
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Author: Jack C Lipton
Title: Shuffled
Universe: Family Values
Summary: A comforting confession to hear
Keywords: MF swap impreg
Revision: $Revision: 1.2 $
Archive: /~CupaSoup/
RCS: $Id: shuffled.x,v 1.2 2006/05/21 13:49:12 jcl Exp $


			  Shuffled

		      by Jack C Lipton

It had been a strange time while my father-in-law, as he was
suffering from a whole collection of medical complications
to aging, lived in our house.

He'd been combative and non-compliant with the home nursing
care he was getting so, after a hospitalization, we decided
to put him in our guest room instead of his own house.  This
would make it easier on us and kept my wife nearer our home
and able to sleep in the same bed with me.

I did my best to keep it pleasant.  We'd take him out to
restaurants for dinner, using his car with the huge seven
hoffa trunk to carry the wheel-chair.  Admittedly, driving a
Lincoln Town Car can be disconcerting to someone like me who
prefers smaller cars, especially since the car is so poorly
named:  After all, there weren't many towns that a Town Car
can fit into, though perhaps the name comes from being able
to *carry* a whole town.

In any case, one day I was sitting and chatting with him in
the living room while my wife was out shopping and we got a
call from my sister-in-law, his daughter.

Now I'll admit that my wife isn't a beauty queen but she has
a very nice face, especially when it isn't covered with a
frown.  I realized that the face is an important factor in a
marriage, since, on waking up, it is hopefully the first of
your spouse's body parts you will see.

Her sister, however, didn't look *anything* like my wife.

Hell, even my step-son and biological son looked more like
siblings than my wife and her sister.  It had been more than
a little bit disturbing.

So when she got off the phone with her father Alfred, he
hung up the phone and sighed.  "She's still not willing to
visit me."

I nodded and shrugged.  "Not much we can do about it, is
there?"

He shook his head.  I knew enough of the dynamics of his two
girls to know that my wife Helen, despite her quickness to
anger, was far warmer of heart than her sister.

Well, some people have cryogenic blood, some don't.

Admittedly, I'm not the smartest man in the world, but I did
know enough to *never* say something derogatory about
another person's family member, though this wasn't _that_
quickly learned a lesson.  After all, one of my key genetic
flaws that my feet aren't big enough.

Well, yeah, I know my feet, being size eleven and a half,
aren't all that small, but I mean that more symbolically, as
in, when I put my foot in my mouth, well, I can still talk.

This one flaw alone may help explain why I'm not sought out
as "friend" material and it is sometimes amazing that my
wife _dated_ me, much less married me.

Sometimes, laying awake in the dark, I listen to my fears,
which tell me she was desperate.

But...

So I'm sitting and talking with him and I say, as usual
without thinking of the consequences, "Sometimes, I swear,
it seems like they've nothing in common, despite being
sisters."

Oops.

Then my mind got blown.  "That's because, despite the birth
certificates, they're not."

What?  I'll bet my mouth hung open.  My wife Helen resembled
both her father and even quite a few of her aunts and
uncles.

Alfred's eyes closed for a moment, looking sad.  "I'm sorry,
I really shouldn't have said that."

I looked around, my curiosity more than merely piqued, then
asked, "What do you mean they're not sisters?"

He sighed.  "Helen is mine but Anne isn't.  Anne is her
mother's but not mine.  We... swapped.  And the rubber
broke.  To make up for it, I got to impregnate Roger's wife
Carol.  My wife Louise had Roger's daughter and Carol had my
daughter.  We each kept the child our wife gave birth to."

I sat there, stunned.

"I wanted a son and so I tried to get Louise pregnant, but
it never seemed to work for us.  Roger and Carol had another
child and I wished I could have more, too, so, after a year
we went back to swapping again and, well..."

He paused, holding my full attention.

I listened to him sigh.  "This time _my_ condom broke.  And
Michelle told me she was fertile.  She was a lovely woman,
so warm hearted, though, in hindsight, her husband Mike was
annoyed... and so he pulled out of Louise, ripped off the
condom he'd been wearing, and pumped his load into Louise."

The silence hung over us as my mouth hung open.  Swapping?
In the 1950s?  "What about the pill," I asked, not thinking
about that time period.

He laughed.  "That didn't really exist yet, so it was either
condoms or taking chances.  What we did, once the condoms
broke, was to make sure we knew who fathered any children,
and, so, we'd not touch our own wives for a month but we'd
be having sex with the other.  He didn't want to take much
of a chance in supporting my child any more than I wanted to
be supporting his, so... we made sure who was the father."

All I could do at this moment was go "Wow" before pausing.
"But Helen looks like your family.  Why doesn't she look
like Michael?"

He laughed.  "Michelle had a girl, same as Louise, but Mike
wanted _his_ daughter and I wanted mine, so, about a week
after the two kids were born, we exchanged babies.  Back
then it was a lot easier to shuffle kids around, you know.
Especially when the doctor who delivers your baby is not one
you'll be seeing regularly, either."

I sighed.  This explained a *lot* of history, especially how
each of the daughters had a different parent as "guardian".
It might even go a long way to explaining the abuse, given
that Alfred would've expected more from his own flesh and
blood.  It was almost scary how this explained so much...

"When Mike, Michelle and Molly, Louise's daughter by Mike,
died in an auto accident, Louise got very depressed.  We
told the kids that it was post-partum depression, but it
never got better and she never completely got over the loss.
Louise ended up resenting Allison, my daughter by Mary, who
seemed to be a happy child, and, so, we never got to swap
again.  Roger and Mary are dead and gone and I've long since
lost touch with Allison, given that it would be hard to
explain to her why I was interested in staying in touch."

My shock had to end.  I shook myself out of this state when
my wife came home with groceries.  While we were bumping
them in, I patted Alfred on the shoulder, "It's okay, she
has no need to know."

    ----------------------------------------------------    

It's funny, now that Alfred is gone, that I sometimes
wonder.  He seemed far more comfortable with me after that
confession and I with him.  It is possible that telling me
the story was his last act of contrition that made his
passing easier for him.

It's strange, but I miss him.  There are still stories I'd
have liked a chance to hear but now it's too late.

The best outcome from this confession, though, is that, with
the way my sister-in-law Anne has pissed off *every* one of
her aunts and uncles, all by leaving all of Alfred's
brothers off of the obituary, I take a lot of very personal
comfort in knowing that my wife has *no* genes in common
with her "sister".

Yes, comfort.

-- 
Jack C Lipton | cupasoup at pele dot cx | /~CupaSoup/
 "All HMOs claim to control health-care costs, albeit one DOA at a time."

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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